Assessing the Impact of Alternative Voting Technologies on Multi-Party Elections: Design Features,Heuristic Processing and Voter Choice

This paper analyzes the influence of alternative voting technologies on electoral outcomes in multi-party systems. Using data from a field experiment conducted during the 2005 legislative election in Argentina, we examine the role of information effects associated with alternative voting devices on the support for the competing parties. We find that differences in the type of information displayed and how it was presented across devices favored some parties to the detriment of others. The impact of voting technologies was found to be larger than in two-party systems, and could lead to changes in election results. We conclude that authorities in countries moving to adopt new voting systems should carefully take the potential partisan advantages induced by different technologies into account when evaluating their implementation.     

Conviction Statistics as an Indicator of Crime Trends in Europe from 1990 to 2006

Convictions statistics were the first criminal statistics available in Europe during the nineteenth century. Their main weaknesses as crime measures and for comparative purposes were identified by Alphonse de Candolle in the 1830s. Currently, they are seldom used by comparative criminologists, although they provide a less valid but more reliable measure of crime and formal social control than police statistics. This article uses conviction statistics, compiled from the four editions of the European Sourcebook of Crime and Criminal Justice Statistics, to study the evolution of persons convicted in European countries from 1990 to 2006. Trends in persons convicted for six offences –intentional homicide, assault, rape, robbery, theft, and drug offences– and up to 26 European countries are analysed. These trends are established for the whole of Europe as well as for a cluster of Western European countries and a cluster of Central and Eastern European countries. The analyses show similarities between both regions of Europe at the beginning and at the end of the period under study. After a general increase of the rate of persons convicted in the early 1990s in the whole of Europe, trends followed different directions in Western and in Central and Eastern Europe. However, during the 2000s, it can be observed, throughout Europe, a certain stability of the rates of persons convicted for intentional homicides, accompanied by a general decrease of the rate of persons convicted for property offences, and an increase of the rate of those convicted for drug offences. The latter goes together with an increase of the rate of persons convicted for non lethal violent offences, which only reached some stability at the end of the time series. These trends show that there is no general crime drop in Europe. After a discussion of possible theoretical explanations, a multifactor model, inspired by opportunity-based theories, is proposed to explain the trends observed.     

One-step liquid-liquid extraction of cocaine from urine samples for gas chromatographic analysis

An improved technique for cocaine extraction from urine samples for gas chromatographic (GC) analysis is described. Employing a simple liquid-liquid extraction (LLE) of cocaine with a mixture of ethyl ether:isopropanol (9:1) the method presents a mean recovery of 74.49%. Limit of detection (LOD) and limit of quantification (LOQ) were 5 and 20 ng/ml, respectively. The method is highly precise (coefficient of variation (CV) <8%) and linear from 20 to 2000 ng/ml. It can he applied to detect the presence of cocaine in urine as a marker of its recent use in drug abuse treatment protocols.     

The 2000-2001 GEP-ISFG Collaborative Exercise on mtDNA: assessing the cause of unsuccessful mtDNA PCR amplification of hair shaft samples

We report the results of Spanish and Portuguese working group (GEP) of International Society of Forensic Genetics (ISFG) Collaborative Exercise 2001-2002 on mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) analysis. 64 laboratories from Spain, Portugal and several Latin-American countries participated in this quality control exercise. Five samples were sent to the participating laboratories, four blood stains (M1-M4) and a sample (M5) consisting of two hair shaft fragments. M4 was non-human (Felis catus) in origin; therefore, the capacity of the labs to identify the biological source of this sample was an integral part of the exercise. Some labs detected the non-human origin of M4 by carrying out immuno-diffussion techniques using antihuman serum, whereas others identified the specific animal origin by testing the sample against a set of animal antibodies or by means of the analysis of mtDNA regions (Cyt-b, 12S, and 16S genes). The results of the other three human blood stains (M1-M3) improved in relation to the last Collaborative Exercises but those related to hairs yielded a low rate of success which clearly contrasts with previous results. As a consequence of this, some labs performed additional analysis showing that the origin of this low efficiency was not the presence of inhibitors, but the low quantity of DNA present in these specific hair samples and the degradation.As a general conclusion the results emphasize the need of external proficiency testing as part of the accreditation procedure for the labs performing mtDNA analysis in forensic casework.     

Brazilian Legal Culture: From the Tradition of Exception to the Promise of Emancipation

This article investigates the existence of an original Brazilian legal culture. It parts from a critical examination of the key moments in the history of Brazil through the accounts of its most important scholars, such as Caio Prado Júnior, Darcy Ribeiro, Sérgio Buarque de Holanda, Wilson Martins, Oliveira Viana, Roberto Damatta, José Murilo de Carvalho, among others. It identifies in the Brazilian legal culture something one might call tradition of exception, which can be found in many of its most prominent aspects, such as the persistent denial of any general or abstract regulatory standards, the uncritical introduction of foreign doctrines and legal patterns, the maintenance of aristocratic traditions in social life and the historical disregard of the Brazilian people as political subject. The article also offers a reflection on the problems and potentials of the current historic moment, in which for the first time Brazilians face the possibility of a genuine cultural emancipation.     

Voltammetric determination of cocaine in confiscated samples using a cobalt hexacyanoferrate film-modified electrode

In this work, a fast, non destructive voltammetric method for cocaine detection in acetonitrile medium using a platinum disk electrode chemically modified with cobalt-hexacyanoferrate (CoHCFe) film is described. The deposition of CoHCFe film at platinum disk (working electrode) was carried out in aqueous solution containing NaClO₄ at 0.1 mol L⁻¹ as supporting electrolite. Stability studies of the film and subsequent voltammetric analysis of cocaine were made in acetonitrile medium with NaClO₄ at 0.1 mol L⁻¹ as supporting electrolite. A reversible interaction between cocaine and CoHCFe at the film produces a proportional decrease of original peak current, due to the formation of a complex between cocaine and cobalt íons, with subsequent partial passivation of the film surface, being the intensity of current decrease used as analytical signal for cocaine. A linear dependence of cocaine detection was carried out in the range from 2.4 × 10⁻⁴ to 1.5 × 10⁻³ mol L⁻¹, with a linear correlation coefficient of 0.994 and a detection limit of 1.4 × 10⁻⁴ mol L⁻¹. The analysis of confiscated samples by the proposed method indicated cocaine levels from 37% to 95% (m/m) and these results were validated by comparison to HPLC technique, being obtained good correlation between both methods.     

Alpine Troubles: Trajectories of De‐Consociationalisation in Austria and Switzerland Compared

For all their differences, both Austria and Switzerland have long been considered to represent key examples of consociational democracy. Since the 1990s, both countries have however faced major challenges to their respective consociationalist regimes. One of the shared features of regime evolution and change in Austria and Switzerland, which can be meaningfully referred to as ‘de‐consociationalisation’, concerns the successful exploitation of external shocks by powerful populist parties. Taking stock of the developments in four different areas (the electoral, the parliamentary and the executive arena as well as interest group/state relations), we identify a complex dynamic which has made the two countries more similar in some respects, but more different in others. Overall, two decades into the twenty‐first century, Austria is significantly less of a consociationalist regime than Switzerland.